Hostile Terrain Exhibition

Hostile Terrain 94 (HT94) is a participatory art project organized by the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP), a non-profit research-art-education-media collective directed by anthropologist  Jason De León. The exhibition is composed of over 3,200 handwritten toe tags that represent migrants who have died trying to cross the Sonoran Desert of Arizona between the mid-1990s and 2019. These tags are geolocated on a wall map  of the desert showing the exact locations where these individuals’ remains were found. This installation will simultaneously take place at a large number of institutions, both nationally and globally in 2021 throughout 2022. 

The Baltimore iteration of the exhibition is co-organized at JHU by  Sanchita Balachandran, associate director of the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum, and Alessandro Angelini, assistant professor in the Johns Hopkins Department of Anthropology. This exhibition is made possible through major funding support of the Dean’s Office of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University, with additional funding from The Friends of the Johns Hopkins University Libraries and the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute. 

The exhibition was previously hosted at Johns Hopkins University with the support and partnership of these entities as well as The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute; the Program in Museums and Society; the Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries and the Sheridan Society Fund; the Program in Racism, Immigration and Citizenship; the Department of Anthropology; Latin America in a Globalizing World; the Program in International Studies; Common Question; and the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum.